- black machines will come with handles made from resin. These are much, much more durable that the black-painted wood handles that have shipped in the past. The black paint has a tendency to chip. For white machines, we're staying with the natural oak: since it is unpainted it is long lasting. We also have reclaimed Italian olive tree handles, as an optional separate purchase. For people who prefer the black painted wood handles, this is available as a no-cost special request, instead of resin handles. https://decentespresso.com/portafilter

Here are the olive and oak natural wood handles, side by side:

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- we're removing the 3 small front screws that hold the front faceplate. We found a way to have the faceplate hang off the steam wand screw, and front standby switch, so the 3 small screws are no longer needed. Some double sided Japanese tape behind the bottom of the faceplate, keeps it from "flapping". This is just a small cosmetic thing. It'll make repairs slightly more difficult, but it's really rare to have to remove the faceplate, so not a big deal in practice. This change is backward compatible to existing customers (ie, you can buy a faceplate w/o the 3 front screw holes), but I wouldn't recommend you bother, as it's a big job to remove that front faceplate (you have to remove the group head), and this is a tiny improvement. I'll be posting a video about that, once it's ready. We're still in the testing phase on this, as we had to design/build a fancy jig to get the alignment perfect, w/o screw holes. Here's a still photo showing a front face (this one, with screws) being mounted using that jig.

and the new front face coming in v1.44:

- a new water intake filter, switching from the off-the-shelf mesh we've always had, to our own design. That'll be backward compatible to all existing machines, and sold inexpensively for anyone who wants it. Our new design has a much greater surface area, so it should need less frequent cleaning, and not add drag to the pump. Also, it can sit on the bottom of the water tank, without causing a "suction seal", so that we'll have more accurate water tank level measurements. Currently, we need to have a bit of distance between the bottom of the intake tube and the ceramic, or else a suction seal occurs, and water can get pulled up the tube. The new design also means we can use more of the water in the tank (almost all of it), instead of leaving a bit behind to avoid suction. Existing customers can switch to the new uptake filter, and also calibrate their intake tube downwards into the tank, to take advantage of this. https://decentespresso.com/cart?filter=intake+filter

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We are moving off NBR rubber, which is the standard on Italian pro machines, to Silicone Rubber, which is preferences of the Home Barista community. This is our own-design gasket, and is colored light grey, so you can easily see any coffee grounds that are stuck to it, that need cleaning. https://decentespresso.com/cart?filter=silicone+gasket

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Part of a regular cleaning routing is taking apart the group head, to remove coffee residue.

We've previously used philips head screw heads for these parts.

Unfortunately, if you don't disassemble your group head for a long time, the screws can be very hard to remove. Some of you have stripped your screw heads in removing the screws.

To address this, we now:

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We have sealed the group head controllers' PCB with a metal plate and gasket, so that steam cannot get into it. Some people reported "ghost touches" which were caused by moisture coming up into the PCB, and this should solve that.

The standby switch, which is to the left of the group head, is changing design. It has confused a lot of people, who pressed it in, and then didn't understand why their DE1 didn't work right (hint: they put their DE1 into standby mode)

The new switch:

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Some people would have their cooling fans start to make rubbing or buzzing noises after several years. This is a common problem with PCs too.

We're now mounting the fans on a separate mount, so that replacing your fan, if this should ever happen, becomes very easy.

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A large rubber grommet has been added to hold the water tubes away from the heaters. A problem sometimes occurred where a water tube would touch the metal side of the heater, where vibrations on the machine would slowly rub the tube and eventually cause a leak.

Note that every water tube in the DE1 already has a outer protective tube, which is colored (the tubes themselves are white, being pure teflon), so this rubbing protection is in addition to that.

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We've been discussing this innovation for some time. Unfortunately, the R&D on this part was not completed in time to be included as part of v1.45. These will be released in the 3rd quarter of 2023, and available to all DE1 owners (v1.1 machines and newer) as a $99 upgrade.

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For people with v1.43 and older machines, some of these upgrades can be easily applied to your machine, if you want to buy the part.

I've grouped each self-upgrade in terms of difficulty of installation. Next to each is the part number

easy:

These "very difficult" changes above require you take apart at least 20 parts (GHC panel, water tube grommet, PCB fan mount), and put them all back together correctly, and/or they require special tools that we had to custom make (front panel without screws, new standby switch)

Note that if you do these upgrades yourself and break your machine, our repairing it will not be covered by warranty. It will be a paid repair job.

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You might notice that this amounts to "not much" and certainly nothing "revolutionary". We've been in the "small evolutionary improvements" stage every since v1.3 introduced the group head controller in April 2020.

We're planning on another 2 years (at least) of this v1.4x model, as we're happy with the hardware, and are now mostly focussed on software (app) and firmware. That's where the most interesting stuff from us will come from.

And all the software stuff we do is (a) backward compatible all the way to the first v1.0 machines and (b) free of cost.